I was on the phone when I saw the huge plume of black smoke rising over the building that stands between my apartment and the Pentagon, barely a quarter-mile away. When I saw it, I was still staring open-mouthed at the pictures of the second plane slamming into the World Trade Center.

SEPTEMBER 17, 2001
The nation and all its citizens, we included, are getting lessons on the practice of public religion, especially in the form of prayers and worship. There is no problem sighting its presence, in a nation that used to be described by some as merely, purely, secular.

One way to treat the public role of "private" or "congregational" religion in a moment such as this one is through close-ups. I chose this e-mail because it is just such a close-up. It is from our friend Stephen Bouman, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in New York. He writes from ground zero.

The classic professions, medicine, law, and religion, have long had distinctive cultures. One shared element of these cultures is the desire among physicians, lawyers, and clerics to assess their respective professional cultures, to look for trends, and, if necessary, to call for changes.

One needs to go no further than the mailbox to notice the current strength of the credit card industry. Offers for new cards pour in daily. Last week, Newsweek subscribers read the cover story "Maxed Out," a discussion of credit card spending and the problem of debt in American society. The story notes that American households carry, on average, eight thousand dollars of credit card debt.

Hoping to remove some uncertainty from discussions of the legal place of religion in public schools, Clifford Mayes and Scott Ellis Ferrin published a study of public school teachers' "views about the place of religion and spirituality in the classroom" in the spring issue of Religion and Education.

George Bush the Elder once denounced it; his wife Barbara called it dumb. Former Education Secretary William Bennett questioned its values. For more than a decade The Simpsons has generated its share of criticism. Many consider the show to be abrasive, abusive - even abominable.

Bjorn Lomborg of Denmark will get good press in the coming weeks for his new book The Skeptical Environmentalist. Like many born-again-to-a-cause sorts, he is motivated by revenge on his own intellectual past as a self-described left-wing Greenpeacer." So he reacts, marshals data, and offers some cogent corrective argument.

"God and Business" was the title of Fortune's July ninth cover story. Two years ago Business Week led with a similar article, "Religion in the Workplace." Both examine the changing place of religion in business or, using the preferred term, spirituality in the workplace. Both articlesask whether God and business can co-exist -- whether one can make meaning and money at the same time.